2005a) ‚Internet Research from a Gender Perspective

The current scientific and political discussion on the under-representation of women within the Internet once again associates women with disinterest in technology in an essentialist manner. Gender-specific attributions are unquestioningly transferred to the new media, and it is assumed that women behave in unfailing conformity with existing gender stereotypes. The intention of this paper is to show that gender research has to use differentiated empirical studies. Gender studies can therefore make a concrete contribution to the task of shaping the Internet in the future. I shall begin by briefly outlining the dilemma of gender studies in the technical area. In the second section I shall describe the reasons for the gender-differentiated Internet access data, using quantitative Internet studies from the USA, calling for a de-dramatisation of difference in this context. In the third section, I will overcome the dichotomous view of the digital divide and present a research framework for differentiated study of differing use habits and use requirements. This section illustrates that such an approach does not make the gender category superfluous, but challenge